No branching out for lottery

Last Updated: Monday 19th July 2010, 00:33 am

Following up the lottery news story about how the operators of the UK Lotto had applied for permission to allow bill payments from lottery terminals comes the decision by the National Lottery Commission that the application has been refused. It’s been a few weeks since the story came to light and clearly the National Lottery Commission have made a decision and how they came to it is interesting.

The commission have clearly been working hard on a decision but they feel that allowing bill payments would give the lottery company an unfair advantage over competitors. Due to the high lottery sales in the UK, the National Lottery Commission believe that allowing mobile phone top ups and bill payments from lottery terminals would give the lottery an unfair advantage over competitors.

When the idea was first made public a few weeks ago the main concerns put forward were for the temptation to gamble, but that didn’t actually come into the National Lottery Commission’s decision making.

The decision is no doubt pleasing to the team behind the Paypoint bill payment company who put up the main objections to the proposal.

You may not be able to pay your bills but you can still buy lottery tickets and in other news the next National Lottery draw is on Wednesday evening. That draw has a jackpot of £2.4 million and follows the £7.7 million rollover winner at the weekend. Of course you don’t even need a lottery terminal if you buy lottery tickets online, just log on and you can play the lottery draw by draw or weeks in advance.